-You talk about fire activity -- that day,
we had the perfect storm. We had dry fuel,
we had high temperatures, and we had
a very strong wind. -Ashland has a grass fire up
by the water treatment plant. In Oxford, if it hits,
it's gonna go quickly. And we're getting inundated
with calls. -It was a losing battle, 100%.
-All these houses are gone. -Any way you cut it,
it was a losing battle. There just was not enough water and not enough people
to fight these fires. -I've got the trailer park
involved. I need some resources. -Copy that. 55, be advised, no resources
except what I sent you earlier. -The fire behavior is
completely different from what we've been seeing. They're burning hotter, faster, they're so erratic
with the winds. You look at this one, I mean,
it went north, and it'd go west and it'd go east,
and it just kind of spread. -The Almeda Fire
erupted into a fast-moving blaze north of Ashland, Oregon, in late morning
of September 8th. Historic red flag winds
were predicted that day, which pushed the fire north
along Interstate 5, consuming over 3,200 acres. Oregon's resources were
stretched thin, battling over 10 large fires
throughout the state. -We were informed that there
would be no resources available to us
should we have a major event. So we knew, coming in
to this incident, that we weren't gonna be able
to get much help. -Jackson County Fire District
#5 and the Ashland Fire Department
were the first units to respond. Within minutes, a second alarm
was called, pulling limited resources
throughout southern Oregon and the Rogue Valley. They numbered around
50 firefighters. -So as soon as we got
to the station, the other firefighter and myself
jumped in the engine. At that point, they announced
on the radio that they had about five houses
that were involved on fire. So we knew instantly
it was gonna be running quick. We notified command
that we responding, and they sent us right away
next to I-5, exit 19. -Yeah, we're out
at a car fire here. Pull in here.
Or stay in the middle. Nobody on there.
You see Aaron? -We had a car fire
at the gas station. The car fire kind of took
some of the heat out of it, and then the next thing we knew,
the whole field was going and, like, off to the races,
there was no, like, stopping it. -While units from District
#5 battled the flames south of Exit 19, spot fires
began to burn to the north, threatening the Bear Creek
Mobile Home Park. -8311 we're on the south side
of Lowe Road, the trailer park. We have multiple trailers
fully involved. We have trees
torching the sides. -It came on the radio
that a trailer park just down the road was starting
to have fire impinge on it. -When we get into the park, and we had a couple trailers
going there, we tried to hold it there. Water was an issue. Ran out of water. Just the amount of wind and heat
and trailers already going, nothing we could do even at
that point to stop it there, so we just made
that decision to move on. -We were reassigned down
to the highway, and we were trying to flank
the side of the fire from jumping to Highway 99. We were quickly overwhelmed
in that mission. -The wind, it just
moved it so fast, house to house to house,
tree to tree to tree, that it was just
impossible to catch. It started that day
as a grass fire, and it quickly progressed
through that grass fire area and wildfire area and into what we call
an urban interface fire. Now, really? I mean, there's no wildfire
in the city of Talent. I mean, where that thing
was burning was asphalt -- the driveways, the homes,
the fire hydrants. It's just burning through
multiple downtown areas. There's so much black smoke
everywhere, you're breathing
all that stuff in. This was structure fire
after structure fire after structure
fire after structure fire. Over and over and over. -The video shows basically
all the buildings on fire. I think that was kind of the
part where it really sunk in, and it was kind of
a moment of defeat 'cause you realize
the scope of the damage. -The Willow Springs Division
has four engines working. We have about five structures
fully involved. -The fire continued north to
the business corridor of Talent. Fire District #5's Chief Hanley
took command of the four engines assigned to the Willow
Springs Division. Their job was to protect
two subdivisions and a retirement community between Autumn Ridge Road
and Willow Springs Drive. -Watch the hose
on the road here. -So Autumn Ridge, by the time
the fire got to Autumn Ridge, it was just consuming, you know,
homes in just a few minutes. Imagine the volume of flame
and smoke that was coming across
all of this area. This was not smoke plumes and
flames were going up in the air. They were being sheeted across. -We're thinking, you know,
that we can make a stand, and next thing we knew,
that spot fire in Autumn Ridge blew up,
making a run through there. And about the time I took those
few pictures, the wind felt like it was gonna kind of settle
down a little bit, and then it just --
the winds picked back up and everything
just went to pieces again. -At this point, it's not
just only Talent burning, Phoenix is burning at this time. And it was probably that same
time that I found out that our Fire Station 3
was burning. -So at that point, we probably had six firefighters
for two neighborhoods. So there's probably 40
to 60 homes in that entire area. Probably over half
of the neighborhoods are gone. -As the fire continued
into Phoenix, crews were reassigned
to Talent Avenue. Their objective was to keep the
fire burning east of the road. If the fire crossed
Talent Avenue, they would lose
the rest of the town. -I'm told,
"All of Talent Avenue's yours. Don't let it cross the road, and here's what you have
for the rest of the night." That's when I met Curt,
saw his engine was one of the ones
that was working for me. When Talent Avenue
really started lighting off, that, of course,
is when hydrants went dry. -We don't have enough water
or resources. Every single building was on
fire when we came into the city. Like, I don't know --
where do we start? And then as soon as you
felt like you were making some headway, I mean, you'd run out of water
and we'd have to refill. And as soon as you'd come back, that structure that you were
working on is now gone. And it was kind of almost this
head-banging-against-the-wall moment where there's nothing
you can do to slow this. -Seen a lot of shit
through my career, and not a lot of it has ever really
I wouldn't say bothered me, but especially at the time,
I can just work through it. I really realized that,
like, holy -- We're hearing reports
of the malls on fire. We're hearing all this shit
that it's making runs through Medford. And my wife's texting me, she's asking
if she should evacuate. And so there's just
all these things. Kind of pressure's hitting me. The other thing
in the back of my mind is we were fighting structure
fires all day with no error. You know, cancer's a big issue. I breathe so much
fucking shit all day. I want my family safe,
and then at the same time, like, I'm in a job right now that's probably gonna take years
off my life that I could be with my family,
and it just -- I've never had
those thoughts before. -We all breathed in
and were consumed by so much nasty
carcinogenic smoke. It was really a tough fight. You're just like,
"Did I just seal my fate, like, on one event?"
You know? Did I breathe in enough stuff
over the last 24, 36 hours to basically just stamp myself
as now I'm gonna have cancer
in 10 years from now? 'Cause that's what 9/11
was for those guys. Right? You know, those guys
are still dying every year. Those guys are dying from the
work they did at Ground Zero. -The winds eventually shifted, pushing the Almeda Fire
back onto itself. In the end, it stretched over 14
miles from its origin in Ashland to where it died
south of Medford, an expanse it covered in
just under 48 hours. Nearly 3,000 structures
were lost. -You know, it's very
overwhelming. And it's very surreal when you
watch your community burn down. -You get in your head where you feel like
you didn't do anything. You didn't stop anything
from burning. Everything that, you know,
we've been on medical calls and a fall victim,
maybe "Oh, I've been at that person's
house for chest pain" -- we've been to all these places. We've gone to all these
businesses. And you're looking at them
going, "What did I do? I feel like I've done nothing." -Reports that there are at least
96 active large fires in the US,
the biggest, of course, in California,
Washington State, and Oregon. -We did everything we could do
to stop this thing, and we just couldn't. There was just nothing
we could do. Everything was stacked. We've always been told this
is a high-risk area. Where Talent is, it's high risk. But we just don't have
the ability to meet the need if something
like this happened again. You know,
that part has to change. We have to get political
to a degree and say that this is our reality and we have to put funding
kind of where our mouth is. We need resources. -So I don't believe these fires
are going away. They're gonna keep
getting bigger. We're gonna keep
setting new records. The fire service is always gonna
push for fire prevention. When it comes down to these
large-scale incidences, these mega-fires or super-fires
that we've been having, resources are the number-one key that we're gonna be
able to handle. -It's tough -- It's tough to think that
this won't ever happen again. Like, if you look at the way
our weather is and the recoveries
of the forest, it really just burned through
a greenway that had, like, a bike path
and lots of fuel in it, and then got into these cities
and ripped through these cities. But as far as a huge wildfire,
still prime. It's still right there to burn.
